Colombian President Authorizes Extradition of 3 Drug-Traffic Kingpins

Colombian President, Andres Pastrana, authorized Monday the extradition to the United States three drug-traffickers, including Fabio Ochoa, one of the top men in the ranks of the Medellin Cartel.

Fabio Ochoa had bee recaptured in October 1999 during a joint operation of the Colombian Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from the United States, after five and a half years in prison back in 1996.

Pastrana signed Monday a decree to hand Ochoa over to U.S. authorities, along with drug kingpings Jairo Mesa and Mario Sanchez.

There are charges filed against them in Florida's State Court on charges of money laundering and cocaine trafficking.

Ochoa's attorneys said their client will appeal Pastrana's decree -- he has five days to appeal the order -- despite there are few chances to escape from extradition.

Fabio Ochoa was the first of the Colombian top drug dealers that turned themselves in to justice in the early 1990s in lieu of extradition to the U.S.

Ochoa is pointed out by authorities as the right arm of late kingpin Pablo Escobar Gaviria, killed by State-security forces in 1993. Escobar headed the drug-trafficking organization known as the Medellin Cartel.

Escobar and his henchmen belonged to a group known as the " Extraditables," who waged a campaign of kidnappings, bombings and assassinations against the government that killed and maimed thousands and traumatized Colombians. They tried to bar extraditions of Colombians to the United States.

In 1988, cartel gunmen kidnapped Pastrana, then a candidate for mayor of Bogota, and spirited him off to a farmhouse near Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city. He was freed a week later by police.

The government made a pact early in the nineties not to extradite the drug-dealers that turned themselves in to justice and put an end to the terrorism campaign in which they used the motto: "it is better to have a grave in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States."

Ochoa, the youngest son of a horse breeder of Medellin, had started a legal battle to avoid extradition to the U.S. after his re-capture in 1999. He created an Internet site and paid for billboards in which he claimed to be innocent.

In a declaration released Monday in the daily El Tiempo, Ochoa demanded Pastrana to comply with the agreement to prevent extradition requested by the U.S.

Under pressure from Washington, Colombia's government cancelled in 1997 the prohibition to extraditions to the United States.

Marta Nieves Ochoa, sister of Fabio Ochoa, said on Monday that President Pastrana, "keeps on selling Colombians to the U.S."

"As the President asks Mr.(Manuel) Marulanda [chieftain of the left-wing guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)] not to tie ropes in the necks of Colombians, he is putting chains in the hands and feet of Colombians he is extraditing," Fabio's sister said.

Fabio Ochoa was recaptured in 1999 in the joint "Operation Millennium" carried out by Washington and Bogota against the drug- trafficking network accused of shipping 30 tons of cocaine per month -- amounting to one billion U.S. dollars -- to Europe and the United States.






People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/